University of Sharjah opens up with online portal

New portal gives students and staff easy access to applications, says university.

Students, faculty and staff at the University of Sharjah now have online access to administration services and information, following the launch of an online portal. The portal, which was implemented by software services company ITWorx, is intended to provide a central point of communication for the university, and to create a gateway to applications and services.

Over 9,000 students, faculty and staff have access to the portal, through a single sign-on system that allows users to access content and applications which are tailored to their requirements and position. Users can also access their university email inboxes, through a link to the University's Microsoft Exchange mail server.

The portal is also being used as a content management system for the university's public web site.

"The results experienced with the new portal in place have been beyond our expectations. The new portal reflects the University's increased reputation as a centre of educational excellence and supports our vision to become a leading academic institution in the Middle East, recognized around the world. ITWorx succeeded yet again in demonstrating its knowledge, expertise and experience, by understanding the needs of a premier higher education institution, coupled with flair and innovation," said Sofiane Benna, head of operations, Network & Telecom, University of Sharjah.

The portal deployment was carried out in under a month by ITWorx education team. By basing the portal on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the university is able to add additional services and applications with ease, said Hafez Hamdy, Sales Manager ITWorx MEA.

"Once the portal is up and running, it is a great launch platform for specialist education solutions. The beauty of SharePoint 07 is that you can deploy applications on top, so all services can just plug into that using the existing infrastructure, the costs are minimal and they can deploy new services very rapidly," Hamdy explained.